Mai Asada was taking ballet lessons in Nagoya, Japan, in the mid-1990s and she was getting pretty good, but her mother thought she needed to strengthen her ankles. So she took Mai to the local ice skating rink.

Mao was 5 at the time. Three years later, she was landing triple jumps. At 12, she landed a triple-triple-triple combination jump at the Japanese national championships. At 14, she became the first junior skater and only sixth woman ever to land a 31/2 revolution triple Axel in competition. Last month, at 15, she became the first woman to land two triple Axels in the same program.

2006 Winter Olympics

Countdown to Turin: 33 days

The third in a series of Sunday columns leading up to the 20th Winter Games.

Olympic calendar: The Olympic torch relay enters the city of Pescara today, on Italy's east coast. It will proceed through 32 more Italian cities before arriving in Turin on Feb. 9, the day before Opening Ceremonies. This is the third torch relay in Italy, following the 1956 Winter Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo and the 1960 Rome Summer Olympics.

She won the Junior World Championships last spring. She finished second behind Russia's Irina Slutskaya at a Grand Prix event in Moscow last fall, then beat American Sasha Cohen at a Grand Prix event in Paris. Then she beat Slutskaya by eight points – a considerable margin in the new international scoring system – at the Grand Prix final.

The Turin Olympics?

Asada can't go. She's too young.

In yet another of the sport's maddening incongruities, the International Skating Union allows you to compete in its Grand Prix series at age 14 but not at the Winter Olympics or World Championships unless you turn 15 by July 1 of the previous year. It's that, or wait four years till the next Olympics.

Asada turned 15 on Sept. 25, 2005, 87 days too late.

"I feel a little bit like competing in Turin," Asada says. "But it will be great if I can compete in Vancouver (in 2010)."

It's created an outcry from the skating world and a bit of a moral dilemma for Japan, a society so grounded in following rules. Despite a veritable flood of e-mails and calls demanding that Asada be allowed to skate in Turin, including one from Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the Japanese skating federation has been reluctant to pressure the ISU to make an exception for a most exceptional skater.

One reason is that the powerful U.S. and Russian federations likely would protest, knowing the presence of a certain 5-foot-2, 81-pound, 15-year-old would dim the gold-medal prospects of Cohen and Slutskaya. Another is Japan reportedly was among the nations that voted for the age limit, based on advice from the ISU's medical commission that landing triple jumps on concrete-like ice is not such a good idea when the body's growth plates aren't fully developed.

Exhibit A is Tara Lipinski, who won the '98 Nagano Olympics at 15 and has barely skated since due to recurrent hip injuries.

But the reality is that the muscle-to-weight ratio is often greater among skinny girls than adult women and that adding an inch to your hips exponentially impacts your ability to spin them three times in the air, which might explain why the last three Olympics ladies champions (Sarah Hughes, Lipinski and Ukraine's Oksana Baiul) were 16, 15 and 16. And why Michelle Kwan struggles to land triple jumps at age 25 that were no problem a decade ago.

The International Olympic Committee allows its international federations to set the age restrictions and other competitive regulations for each sport at the Winter Games. In this case that's the ISU. And the ISU, which has to call an emergency Congress to change the rule, ain't budging.

"Come on, this is not a case for a vote," says Ottavio Cinquanta, the ISU's Italian president. "It is not a case of urgency. It's a case of a wonderful skater that is too young according to the rules to take part in the Olympic Games. Period. There is nothing else to be said."

What separates Asada from other jumping beans is that she doesn't telegraph her jumps, using the length of the rink to set them up, and that her spins and footwork and artistry are the equal of most veteran skaters. Another way of putting it: She's a freak of nature.

"Everybody else, I can tell when they are going into a jump," says Rena Inoue, the Japanese-born pairs partner of Poway High alum John Baldwin Jr. "With Mao, I can't tell. She never says, 'OK, here's the setup for the jump.' She's so confident in her jumps, she can do it any time, from any direction, in any position. It's amazing."

Her artistry, certainly, will improve by the 2010 Olympics. But there's no guarantee her athleticism will, and therein lies the wrenching potential for tragedy.

"They say that the Olympics are all about luck and timing, and I think about Mao," Inoue says. "In four more years she'll be 19, which is a really hard age for girls both physically and mentally. Her body is going to change, and there's nothing you can do about it."